Uphill Battle
by belittledtolate
Summary: Dean leaves home at seventeen after disappointing his father, joining the Marines to make his father proud. Year's later his brother Sam, never knowing why his brother left goes in search or his older brother to find what's left of him. Dean/Cas
1. Chapter 1

Title: Uphill Battle

Author: belittledtolate

Rating: M

Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Cas, references to Dean/OMC, Sam/Jess, Mary, John.

Spoilers: none AU

Word Count: 1,393 (this chapter (WIP))

Summary: Dean leaves home at seventeen after disappointing his father by being gay, he joins the Marines in a hope at making his father proud. Year's later his brother Sam, never knowing why his brother left goes in search or his older brother to find what's left of the boy he used to know.

I was seventeen when I couldn't hide it anymore. That's not to say for the lack of trying.

It was just that there was this thing inside me, clawing at my very soul, trying so desperately to get out that to keep it in hurt every ounce of me.

But he just kept talking question; asking if I was going to go to prom that year, who was the lucky lady I would ask, do I have some special lady in mind, that it's fine to bring a girl back to the house sometime to met everyone if I'd like.

With every word it was like a stab deeper and deeper. It was this hurt that had my confession out of my mouth before I even realized I was thinking of saying anything. And once it had left my lips it's not like I could take it back, no matter how much I wanted to. Because by then I had seen the look on my Dad's face, the mixture of shock and horror, with just a little bit of anger.

I wanted to play it off as a joke but I knew that there was no hope of that as I felt the tears drip down my face. Because I could tell by the way he stared at me that I couldn't deny it any longer, to many pieces of the puzzle where sliding into place in his heads. I could hear it, the gears turning, and making sense of all the things about me that never really fit.

The real reason I never had girlfriends although I always had friends who were girls who seemed up for it. Why I never showed any interest in them, instead content to hang out with my friends. The reason I always talked about sports and cars while all my friends could talk about was which girl was the hottest in class.

For a long time I didn't understand why I couldn't for the life of me see what they saw. I wanted to, I tried to.

I spent nights alone at home trolling the internet for that spark inside to be light from the many painted faces in ecstasy online only to find myself disgusted or indifferent to the images. Or the worse, to find my self drawn in by the partner in the movie that I was supposed to ignore, to the point where one night I finally got the nerve to click on a different link only to find that spark that I had so long for and been so disgusted with my self that I ended up sitting in the shower crying for an hour before I convinced myself that it couldn't be true, that it must be some weird puberty thing because I was only 12.

Because there was no way I could be like that. There was no way I could want to do those things that where supposed to be disgusting, that were perverse. There was no way that those images could light an ache inside me I've been missing. Because I like sports, I was good at sports .I loved to talk about cars and loud music and get my hands dirty. I was my father's son, I was going to be a marine and be a hero, I was going to be a fireman and have a family, I was a total guy, but unfortunately it seemed also a man's man.

So I did the only thing I could, I ignored those feelings. Pushing them so far down that they it began to fester. It started as a dull itch that grew into a soul consuming pain that I felt that day.

The pain was manageable for the longest time, which was of course until football camp last summer. Two months of hard physical labor next to sweaty hot men, and although my roommate could see what we did as just helping a friend out in the absence of girls, I couldn't. The way his body moved to my touch, the look on his face, the way his skin felt on my hands, the things I wanted him to do to me. I could tell he knew that it was different to me, that I was something else but for two months I suited him, and he made sure to voice his opinion on our differences on that last day. To this day those words he said to me still hurt. It was then that everything changes, then when no matter what I wanted I couldn't deny that this was me, that I would never feel at inferno of lust a desire for the smooth curves of a woman. And I had to admit to myself that I was gay.

And it was this realization that caused me to now be sat here, in the passenger seat of my fathers car pulled off to the shoulder of the road, father looking like his head is about to explode. And I can tell this is going to be bad, that I may regret this. But I can't help feeling happy somewhere inside my mixed up head because the pain has stopped.

Sometimes looking back I wished he would have yelled at me instead of saying nothing. He just started the car back up and stared darkly at the road and drove us home. I moved to get out of the car when he told me to wait. He was still staring straight ahead, as though looking at me wasn't even an option. His voice was deep and calm as he told me that I had a decision to make. How I could either go inside and we could both forget this conversation happened and I could find a nice girl to date or I could go inside pack a bag and leave, because he wasn't having that kind of thing in his house, not when he had another son to think about.

And I stared at him, I stared open mouthed, hot tears still streaming down my face at the vacant spot my father had left in his wake. And I sat outside for an hour till I eventually went inside, my mother asking me what was wrong, my brother transfixed by his book. And I didn't speak, not as I went upstairs and packed a bag, or grabbed the money I had hidden in my closet. I didn't answer as my mother asked me where I was going as I walked out the front door, not looking back to see my father's stern look as he sat stoically in the kitchen.

I wish I could say that I left and went and became a proud successful man, but things like that rarely happen. Instead I called a friend from my football team asking if I could stay the night at his house because I knew his mom was never in town any ways and didn't care if he had people over. I didn't tell him anything other then play off that my dad and I had a fight about my grades or some other crap I made up at the time.

The next day I did something that I still don't know if I regret, even though it cost me so many things in life. The thing is it also giving me my greatest gift as well. I think I did it out of some twisted need for my father's affection still.

I went and enlisted in the Marines.

Usually at 17 they make you enter into a DEP (delay of entry program) until you graduate, but the one thing that my general lack of interest in girls and my fear of actually pursuing a guy did was get me a lot of high school credits, so I was able to leave a high school a month later at the end of my junior year. I had mailed the form to my dad, and to this day I can only guess and say he signed it and sent it in because I never spoke to him since that day in the car.

The next week I found myself in California going into boot camp as a 17 year old boy with a daddy complex, and leaving a war as a 22 year old man without a leg.


	2. Chapter 2

_So I made some small changes to this due to me uploading it very late at night, and my sleep deprived brain was unable to see all the glaring grammar mistakes. Hopefully I can have the next chapter up sometime next week, although I am swamped at work and barely have the time to write, so bear with me._

Title: Uphill Battle 2/?

Author: belittledtolate

Rating: M

Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Cas, references to Dean/OMC, Sam/Jess, Mary, John.

Spoilers: none AU

Word Count: 1,104 (this chapter (WIP))

I had just decapitated a zombie when something hit me square in the face, blocking my vision.

"If you don't put your laundry in the hamper this instant it is getting thrown off the balcony! We just talked about this last time. I only agreed to do it this week cause you have night class, you could at least make it a little bit easier for me. I'm your girlfriend, not a maid!"

"Sorry?"

"…No, I'm sorry…it's just been one of those days, my professor decided that we another lab today and didn't care to tell us till we wear already in class this morning. I was in class it six and I didn't get to fix dinner and the poor dog was here by himself all day…"

"Jess its okay, I get it. I should pay more attention to where I through my clothes. Why don't you go take a shower and I'll start dinner."

She gave me the sweetest face, some where between a guilt and complete adoration, the same look that made me fall in love with her in our freshman year seminar when she spilled her whole coffee on me on the second day.

I have to say that I have never been so happy to receive second degree burns.

Jess went to shower while I pulled the chicken out of the fridge. I guess that's what I get for trying to play Xbox after class rather then cleaning up the apartment.

I was cutting up the vegetables to cook on the stove, with Jack our old English bulldog dancing around on his hind legs for scrapes, when I realized just how lucky I was.

I was a 22 years old Stanford graduate, in my first year of Stanford law. I was living with the most amazing, intelligent girl I had ever met. We had the sweetest dog who I tell everyone is my furry son.

And I knew I wanted all of it forever.

That was the night that I decided to propose, standing there making stir-fry in the kitchen of our tiny studio apartment after being yelled at.

It was also the night that made me want to find him.

You see as I was standing there in the kitchen thinking how wonderful everything is and how much I wanted to get married, and how and when I would propose, Jess came out of the bathroom clothed in a pair of tennis shorts and an old t-shirt attempting to put her hair up.

But she tripped on a shoe and hit the cheap Ikea bookcase causing every thing on it to fall, including a picture.

"Oh no, I'm such a klutz, I'm so sorry I broke the frame!"

"Jess don't worry, it's a cheap frame hun."

"No, no I know how much you love this picture, I'm so sorry." She bent down to try to pick up the glass.

"Jess, grab Jack and keep him in the Kitchen, I'll clean it up, you're barefoot."

She actually listens to me and goes to the kitchen as I grab the dust pan.

I don't know what it was when I shock off the glass and saw his face. I had had that picture up since I was 17 and had found it during packing up my parent's house. It had sat on my desk in my dorm.

It was the last picture that we had all taken together, the last one of us all as a family. I don't even remember taking it, but there I am with Dean's arm around me stood next to my parents all smiling at the camera.

It never made me sad to see it, just made me remember how fragile life can be from one second to the next.

But something came over me, and for the first time in a long time I felt like there was something missing in my life, because I realized that when I had pictured that wedding with Jess, Dean was standing right next to me as my best man.

And before I could stop myself, I felt that pain of him leaving open up again.

For the longest time I was so angry, with him, with my parents, at the world. Dean and I had always been close growing up. He was four years older but it worked, I looked up to him, wanted to be like him. He always looked out for me at school and let me hang out with him and his friends when they came to our house. He was always there for me growing up, until one day he just wasn't. And no one would tell me why.

No one would ever tell me why. But from how angry Mom was I knew it was Dad's fault. And he would never tell me anything.

When I was fifteen I got into a huge fight with him about it, so bad that he hit me. Just backhanded me across the face. It was then that I realized how little of a man my father was. And I stopped fighting with him and stopped talking to him in general.

When I was sixteen my parents separated, and unlike most kids I was happy about it. I couldn't stand it anymore. I just couldn't live with the tension anymore.

So when they divorced a year later I wasn't too bothered.

When I was twenty I went to my Mom's house for Christmas. We were eating dinner in silence except for _It's a Wonderful Life _playing in the background, Mom having had one too many glasses of wine when she just started crying. Within the next hour I was reassuring my Mom that there was no way she would have know that when Dean walked down those stairs all those years ago we would never hear from him again.

I think the worst part of it is I still don't know why he left, I thought about asking my Dad, but I haven't spoken a word to him since I was 18. That and the fact that Dad decided the best type of comfort was Southern Comfort.

And that's how this whole thing started.

Two months after that day in the kitchen I proposed to Jess. I took her for a drive to the forest preserve we used to go to when we were first dating. We went for a hike up to the top of this hill where we could see the water, I got down on one knee and she said yes. She cried, I cried, our Moms cried.

We decided then to wait two years, have a long, calm engagement. That way I would be done with Law school and Jess would be done with her Doctorate in physical therapy.

And I would have time to look for Dean.

Three months after that day in the kitchen, as Jess excitedly talked about a potential bridal party and who I wanted to be a groomsman, I approached the subject of Dean.

And once again Jess reminded me why I love her, as she was completely on board with the idea.

Now the only question is where do you start to look for someone you haven't seen for eight years?


End file.
